This issue’s worrying news is of an oil spill that has devastated two islands in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago. Otherwise we have cutbacks, and separated populations, watching sharks get spruced up, and an indication that water fleas do have a history…

In our final article you are warned to slap on sun block now if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, due to a hole in the ozone layer. This problem is set to disappear by the end of the century, however, so it is one climatic problem we won’t be handing over to our grandchildren to solve.

Marine science

Islands in the ocean: Way back and when we were taught that splitting a parent population so that sub-populations that can no-longer interbreed is an important step towards the development of new species. Even then it was obvious that there was a bit of a problem in the world’s oceans, where there are no obvious barriers – so why is it the most diverse habitat on the planet? Slowly we are beginning to pick out some of the factors that do lead to marine populations becoming separated, the latest is the observation that ocean currents in the western Indian Ocean are acting as barriers to free interbreeding between dolphin populations. ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2011)

A history of marine science: A nice personal account of the development of marine science from Socrates to Forbes, by Kevin Zelnio in Deep Sea News, March 24th, 2011

NOAA to face cuts: Around the world environmental agencies are facing a period of austerity. Cassandra’s Tears March 22, 2011.

Cleaner sharks on seamounts: Open ocean sharks frequent shallow waters, such as at seamounts, in order to employ the services of cleaner fish, which remove parasites from the sharks’ skin. This paper reviews remote video camera observations of activity on a seamount in the Philippines.
Oliver SP, Hussey NE, Turner JR, Beckett AJ (2011) Oceanic Sharks Clean at Coastal Seamount. PLoS ONE 6(3): e14755. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014755

Diversity’s best: Modern agriculture relies on strict monoculture, to assist crop maintenance and mechanical harvesting, but it appears that in nature the greater the biodiversity the higher the total productivity. ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011)

Tactics and strategy in seabirds: Long-lived seabirds such as the ancient murrelet (Synthliboramphus antiquus), which nest in burrows, have the ability to tune their incubation behaviour to suit immediate environmental factors. In this study it is found that egg neglect occurs as a result of increased environmentalpressure.
Shoji A, Elliott KH, Aris-Brosou S, Crump D, Gaston AJ (2011) Incubation Patterns in a Central-Place Forager Affect
Lifetime Reproductive Success: Scaling of Patterns from a Foraging Bout to a Lifetime. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17760. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017760

A water flea’s history: With the publication of the Daphnia pulex (water flea) genome, it has become clear that these tiny crustacea produce neurotrophins, chemicals associated with learning in mammals. It appears that these tiny animals can learn from their past experiences… ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2011)

The bryozoan family tree: Researchers in Sweden are working on the phylogeny of bryozoans, based on sampes from around their coastline. ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011)

Counting viruses: A new technique for evaluating viruses in the natural environment may assist our understanding of these twilight organisms. The technique sorts individual virions by flow cytometry onto agarose beads, where they are encapsulated and amplified using Multiple Displacement Amplification (MDA) in situ. PCR is then used to barcode and identify the virions.
Allen LZ, Ishoey T, Novotny MA, McLean JS, Lasken RS, et al. (2011) Single Virus Genomics: A New Tool for Virus Discovery. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17722. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017722

Tube dweller discovered: The fossil of a 525 million year old animal that was previously only know by the sediment tubes it created to live in has been discovered. The animal, which looks like a crumpled feather, appears to be a primitive hemichordate. As such it is fairly closely related to us (as these things go). ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2011)

Clinging slime moulds: Slime moulds are usually unicellular, but cells group together in times of stress to form fruiting bodies. These consist of a rigid tube on top of whoth the fruiting body sites. The tube is formed of a ring of epithelial cells, which are co-ordinated by the same proteins used to co-ordinate epithelial tissues in all multicellular animals, namely alpha- and beta-catenin. ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2011) [The reproductive strategy reported here is probably only used on land, but this has interesting insights into the development of multicellular organisms as a whole, so I’ve included it here]

Conservation

Easy fish: Fish quickly learn to avoid hunters, such as spear-gun touting divers, but they also forget their fear quite quickly when the threat is removed, such as during a temporary fishing ban. When the ban is lifted, the fish are easy prey, and catch numnbers can be artificially boosted by their naive responses to threat. ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011)

Counting fish on the reef: An improved statistical approach to determining the actual number of fish on a reef from the head count of the ones you’ve actually seen. The technique avoids pitfalls with estimates based on the size of the catch landed, and the difficulty of monitoring actual numbers by direct observation. ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2011)

Whales respond to sonar: Tagged Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) were seen to leave the area of a naval underwater range where sonars were in regular use, and return only after a period to 2-3 days quiet.
Tyack PL, Zimmer WMX, Moretti D, Southall BL, Claridge DE, et al. (2011) Beaked Whales Respond to Simulated and Actual Navy Sonar. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17009. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017009

Modelling coral stress: A new computer model that looks at how corals in the Indian Ocean are being stressed. ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011)

Vital signs: Monitoring the biological productivity on reefs by comparing the rates of oxygen usage and production. ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2011)

Lions on the eastern seabord: Lionfish are spreading quickly in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, becomming the first non-native species to establish a sustained population in this area. What the impact of this invasive species will be in the area is unknown. ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011)

Fisheries and exploitation

Chemical plant: Lots of marine organisms produce medically and scientifically useful compounds. One of the mysteries has been that often neighbouring organisms of the same species produce different compounds. In this study the cyanobacteria, Prochloron didemni, that lives symbiotically in tropical sea squirts, has been found to be one source of this variation.
Donia MS, Fricke WF, Ravel J, Schmidt EW (2011) Variation in Tropical Reef Symbiont Metagenomes Defined by Secondary Metabolism. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17897. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017897

Young anchovies get an ear full: The balance organs in anchovies in the Bay of Biscay have been used to track their life history. The findings indicate quite a complex dependency between early life and the long term survivalof the fish. Surprisingly it appears that anchovies that move out of the estuary where they are born to feed along the coast do best, despite the fact that there is less fodd there. ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2011)

They shall eat flies: Possibility of replacing fish meal, commonly fed to livestock, with protein based on fly larvae. Marine Conservation News, March 21, 2011

Barcoded catfish: The catfish are a very diverse and successful order that includes 3,000 species, 478 genera and 36 families. This paper describes using DNA barcode techniques to identify catfish phylogeny.
Wong LL, Peatman E, Lu J, Kucuktas H, He S, et al. (2011) DNA Barcoding of Catfish: Species Authentication and Phylogenetic Assessment. PLoS ONE 6(3): e17812. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017812

Butterfish cap raised to extend squid fisheries: Squid fisheries in the NE USA were having to close because the bycatch of butterfish was nearing the permitted limits set by NOAA’s fisheries service. To prevent this closure the permitted take of butterfish has been increased by 17%. Butterfish are normally discarded dead at sea. [An interesting insight into how fisheries are managed.] ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2011)

Halibut restrictions: NOAA is to implement restrictions on Pacific Halibut fisheries due to concern over declining stocks. Much of the fisheries in Alaska is sport/private charter, which exceeded its harvest limit by 62% in 2010. ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2011)

Pollution

Oilspill on Nightingale Island: A shipwreck in the South Atlantic brings the spectre of oil pollution to the home of the rock hopper penguin. Dr. M in Deep-Sea News, on March 21st, 2011 :: More on this from the BBC World Service Science in Action (podcast) – there are links here to further resources.

Seals harbour pollutants: The bodies of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) living close to industrialised coastlines pick up a range of pollutants, including heavy metals and PCBs. ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2011)

Sardines suffocate in LA: While a toxic algal bloom is implicated in the mass deaths of fish in King Harbor, by the presence of domoic acid in the fish intestines, the actual cause of death was suffocation. [Report quotes an interesting set of laboratory observations and inferences related to the incident]. By Miriam in Deep Sea News, March 14th, 2011

Flow rate estimate: Measurements of hydrocarbons in the atmosphere hundreds of feet above the sea surface have been used to produce estimates of the flow rates from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011)

Prestige spill report: A study comparing the actions adopted by a dozen countries following a major oil-spill event. These include legal and technical changes following the wreck of the Pallas in German waters. Generally states re-analyses the risks, and check that the public authorities responsible for dealing with these crises are up to scratch. Additionally, countries may enact policies intended to reduce the chance of recurrence. ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011)

Climate change

Arctic ozone hole: Anyone in the Northern hemisphere is advised to wear extra sun-block this spring, as a record thinning of the Arctic ozone layer is occurring. The good news is that, whilst ozone loss is caused by the release of man-made CFC’s (chloro-fluoro-carbons), the total ban on these compounds means that this problem is getting better, and no depletion events are expected in the latter half of this century. ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011)